The White House just open sourced their first Github repo • Hacker News Board

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#11

Post by jat850 » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:31 PM UTC

intoit wrote: post #5

Moving from MongoDB to MySQL. I never understood why people felt they need MongoDB/NoSQL for their projects. Does anyone have an example where it was really necessary/advantageous?

Sure, a couple I can think of:

- when JSON is the native language of your application, certain NoSQL implementations are beneficial. The value/need for this is changing with more RDBMS introductions of JSON datatypes.

- speed/ease of development/familiarity - sqlite is easy to set up and maintain for small installations/projects, so is mongo or couch or redis - fairly straightforward tradeoff

- leveraging other platforms. Quick example might be wanting to take advantage of Amazon Dynamo or SimpleDB. Sure, RDS is right there too and scales in a similar elastic fashion, but Dynamo especially feels much, MUCH more hands off in terms of redundancy and application design. We use Dynamo since day 1 of its release (we transitioned from mongoDB to Dynamo with 1 day of work) and have not looked back. In our particular project I cannot conceive of how or why we would want to use an RDBMS, it does not fit the task.

I'm not advocating for NoSQL over RDBMS in any given, or especially all, situations. But there are plenty of reasons to select nosql-based implementations.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#12

Post by daenz » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC

And, in the spirit of the project, they'll reject all pull requests with a patronizing response about the way things are.[1][2]

1. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regul...

2. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-us...

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#13

Post by SoftwareMaven » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC

izakage wrote: post #4

I am curious about GPL compatibility in this situation. According to [1], software developed by US federal government cannot be licensed under the GPL since it is automatically in the public domain. However, the github repo readme makes the following claim: "The project utilizes code licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and therefore is licensed under GPL v2 or later." While I applaud this effor…

This was exactly my question. How can they put limitations on public domain code?

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#14

Post by zacharycohn » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:33 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #10

It would be really cool if they let the devs use their public names and GitHub accounts to commit. As of right now it is WH-NewMedia, and there is no history. Makes me think this is a marketing excersize rather then a new leaf in federal software development.

I doubt it's a marketing exercise. There are people who really are trying to change things from inside. It takes time, and it takes a lot of small steps. Why don't you contact them and encourage them to use individual public names?

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#15

Post by kyebosh » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:38 PM UTC

Certainly an interesting microcosm of a type of democracy... I wonder how feasible this kind of model would be for actual policy making.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#16

Post by dkhenry » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:39 PM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #14

dkhenry wrote: post #10

It would be really cool if they let the devs use their public names and GitHub accounts to commit. As of right now it is WH-NewMedia, and there is no history. Makes me think this is a marketing excersize rather then a new leaf in federal software development.

I doubt it's a marketing exercise. There are people who really are trying to change things from inside. It takes time, and it takes a lot of small steps. Why don't you contact them and encourage them to use individual public names?

I don't doubt there are people on the inside trying to change things, and I applaud their efforts, but I would hate to see their efforts hijacked by the political arm thinking they can sell us a bill of goods and get a bunch of free press.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#17

Post by diminoten » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:39 PM UTC

intoit wrote: post #5

Moving from MongoDB to MySQL. I never understood why people felt they need MongoDB/NoSQL for their projects. Does anyone have an example where it was really necessary/advantageous?

When I don't know what my schema would look like I like using mongodb.

Also, when I don't feel like dealing with the OR impedance mismatch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_impedance_mis...

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#18

Post by nhebb » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:42 PM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #14

dkhenry wrote: post #10

It would be really cool if they let the devs use their public names and GitHub accounts to commit. As of right now it is WH-NewMedia, and there is no history. Makes me think this is a marketing excersize rather then a new leaf in federal software development.

I doubt it's a marketing exercise. There are people who really are trying to change things from inside. It takes time, and it takes a lot of small steps. Why don't you contact them and encourage them to use individual public names?

I would believe that more if there were a single White House petition that resulted in action. Even their SOPA petition response was pretty murky.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#19

Post by pnathan » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:46 PM UTC

intoit wrote: post #5

Moving from MongoDB to MySQL. I never understood why people felt they need MongoDB/NoSQL for their projects. Does anyone have an example where it was really necessary/advantageous?

I like it because it provides a flexible material for development without committing to a schema.

Re: The White House just open sourced their first Github repo

#20

Post by eco » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:48 PM UTC

izakage wrote: post #4

I am curious about GPL compatibility in this situation. According to [1], software developed by US federal government cannot be licensed under the GPL since it is automatically in the public domain. However, the github repo readme makes the following claim: "The project utilizes code licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and therefore is licensed under GPL v2 or later." While I applaud this effor…

Seems like it matches the situation of wanting to release your additions to a GPL codebase into the public domain. Doing that is perfectly fine[1]. It feels like a hole in the GPL for some reason though.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#RequiredToClaimCop...